


Saros

by AugustArchon



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Canon - Manga, Canon-Typical Violence, Card Games, Character Study, Cursed Spirits to Friends to Lovers, Friendship, M/M, Puzzleshipping, Shadow magic, Slow Burn, yami comes to terms with being a person, yugi comes to terms with being lightly possessed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-16 12:22:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21507868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AugustArchon/pseuds/AugustArchon
Summary: Yugi knows full well that magic isn't real—that granted wishes are just superstition—but working on the puzzle gives him something to hope for, and hope is enough to carry him through eight years of loneliness and anxiety. And then he does the impossible, and solves it, and it turns out magic is more than myth after all.The cursed spirit he wakes leaves the taste of smoke on the back of Yugi's tongue, and the screams of classmates echoing in his dreams. Yet beyond all odds, between black eyes and penalty games, the boy and his shadow manage to meet in the middle.
Relationships: Mutou Yuugi/Yami Yuugi
Comments: 8
Kudos: 62





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enormous thanks to my beta [puzzlerabbit](https://twitter.com/puzzlerabbit) for all their work helping me fine-tune the tone and pacing of my writing, and being a constant sounding board! None of this would be possible without their help.

A quiet click echoes like a gunshot, ricocheting down corridors that have known silence for so long that time has circled back and consumed itself. In the same instant a shadow is ripped from the maze and thrust ruthlessly into flesh—into a body with teeth, and tongue, and lungs that scream for oxygen.

He gasps like a drowned thing pulled to shore, sucking in long, shuddering breaths as the last of his jagged shards settle together. At the edge of his awareness some foreign thought lingers and he lashes out on instinct, snatching it by the throat and smothering it.

Collapsed over the desk, clutching warm metal like a lifeline, the shadow drags in another shaky lungful of air. It feels like choking on sand. Everything is too much, from the fractal heartbeats drumming a funeral march in his chest to the burning light overhead. Even the thoughts swirling through his mind are deafening.

He squints past the glare of the lamp, trying to force away the panic of being made corporeal. Made _real_.

Each fragment of his consciousness is a prism that splits reality into its pieces, ricocheting in technicolor as six dozen eternities pass in parallel between one blink and the next. He pushes himself upright and gives his head a sharp shake as though doing so might rattle the pieces of himself into better alignment. It does little besides make him dizzy, but he clings to his newfound sense of off-kilter self gleefully.

Despite the way the room dips and sways, he holds one crystalline conviction: someone has trespassed on the bounds of his soul. It must be righted, and the power to do so gathers in the dark corners of the room.

He knows it in the same way he understands that the pendant he grips must be protected at all costs—intrinsically, with no sense of what put that knowledge there, and no thought to question it. The shadow was built to punish, to hand down justice, and the directionless rage in his chest leaves no inclination for mercy.

His fingers move unthinkingly to slip the length of ageworn cord over his head. The world is not in balance, and that cannot be left to stand. There must be a game.

And for that, he needs money.

Digging through the immediate vicinity yields… less than he’d hoped. Certainly not enough to measure a soul. There’s two hundred thousand yen in a backpack by the bed, in denominations too large to make it usable on its own, and four hundred eighty or so in the pocket of a sweatshirt he finds tossed in a heap in the corner. Another few bills peek out of a battered wallet. The shadow grimaces and accepts the fact that he will have to spare some time to prepare.

That's alright; the whole night is at his disposal. His stumbling steps are slowly gaining confidence as his body remembers what his mind cannot. Muscle memory sees him reach for the phone on the nightstand and cradle the receiver to his ear, fascinated and repulsed by the whirr that seems to superimpose over itself as the dial spins back. He finds himself so caught up in the physical sensation that when a voice speaks across the line, he can only stare at the wall, fingers brushing the old phone’s plastic housing until the person on the other end grunts and hangs up.

He spins the rotor again. Ten digits in succession, ten motions that refract through themselves until the shadow loses track of which is which, until finally the same voice barks something across the line in irritation.

Speaking doesn’t come naturally, though. The shadow doesn’t know if he ever has before, and doesn’t enjoy doing so now, but he slowly manages to put the syllables together in his head.

“Midnight,” he says after a delay. The words feel unfamiliar on his tongue even though the language registers in his ears. “The schoolyard.”

On the other end someone asks, “Yugi?” but the shadow hangs up again without response. The boy will come.

Finding something imposing to wear is a simple enough task, and the pyjamas he’d been wearing land unceremoniously on the floor before he turns to leave. All that’s left is a matter of assembling the rest of the money for the game. He makes his way gingerly down the stairs to the rooms below, fumbling the keys to get into the shop proper. The shelves’ offerings make his fingers itch, but he's here with a purpose so he makes a beeline to the cash register.

Empty. Damnit.

His hand knows the combination to the safe under the counter so he tries that next, but comes up with little more than before—certainly not enough for what he needs. He pockets the limited cash he's found and shuts the safe again, spinning the lock closed with a flick of his wrist.

There are other keys on his keyring, mostly unlabeled, but if he closes his eyes and skims the surface he can dredge up loose associations to directions and doors. It's enough to work out the locks they belong to—one he disregards entirely, as the interior of the school will be inaccessible at this hour, and another goes to a lockbox upstairs that turns out to have nothing of interest. Just papers with the name _Yugi Mutou_ scrawled across embossed papers, alongside dates and the like. The third key leads the shadow out of the shop, through a back alley, and across town to a wooden gate, which opens to his fingers with a quiet click.

There's not much to be found inside the yard it encloses, but the house it's associated with… that’s tempting.

The shadow circles the perimeter, looking for an entry point. All the doors are locked, and the windows are pretty high up—this body is frustratingly small, he’s quickly learning—but there's one that holds promise. Retreating, the shadow finds a neglected potting bench which he pulls quietly to the side of the house, and a couple empty fruit crates to stack on top until he can reach the window.

When he tugs on the frame it doesn't budge, and the shadow rocks back on his heels to assess the situation. He knows nothing about their construction, and no information on the matter bubbles to the surface, but any puzzle can be solved if all the pieces are present. Breaking through would be simple enough, but that would draw attention he doesn’t want. Presumably the thing is locked from the inside, which means he either has to find a way to shim it or to open it through force, and as far as he can see there’s no way to get something in at the right angle to flip the handle of the lock.

Force it is, then. After some rummaging the shadow climbs back up the haphazard stack, this time gripping a rusted flathead screwdriver. 

The process takes time, but with a bit of determination he manages to pry the glass loose and pull it from the frame without doing too much damage. The edges of the wood end up slightly marred, but not in a way that would be noticeable unless someone went looking for it. Leveraging himself through the resultant opening is easy in comparison, although it’s a decent drop to the floor and the shadow lands off-kilter, catching himself hard.

A kaleidoscope of pain echoes up his forearm and knocks his mind askew. He laughs breathlessly at the ache, clutching his arm to his chest and relishing the sensation. It hurts, sure, but the pain is undeniable proof that he’s _real._

There are voices upstairs, muffled by the insulation—it's late enough to be dark, with most people indoors, but not so late that they’re asleep yet. The shadow rummages through the house quietly, careful not to leave evidence of his presence behind. There are no wallets to be found, likely kept upstairs, and the purse he rummages through yields little better. He finds a jar of change on the counter in the kitchen, but coins do him little good.

Finally, luck strikes as he’s rifling through the cabinets. One of the tins in the back turns out to contain a folded stack of ten-thousand yen bills instead of tea leaves, and the shadow doesn’t bother to hold back a toothy grin. Perfect. He starts to replace the empty tin, flipping the latch and reaching on his tiptoes to push it to the back of the cabinet, when the squeak of the stairs echoes through the silent kitchen.

The shadow freezes in place, familiar icy fear snaking through his veins like an old friend. In one smooth movement he shuts the cabinet, draws a knife from the block on the counter, and tucks himself down into a dark corner out of immediate sight.

He can’t be caught. Being caught ends the game, and more than anything, the trespasser must be punished.

At any cost.

Footsteps approach and the stove flares to life. The shadow pulls his knees to his chest, trying to minimize the space he takes up, and slows his breathing to virtual silence. Having a heart to race is a novelty that excites him, making his pulse speed all the more, but aside from a somewhat feral curl of his lips he remains perfectly motionless while the kettle clanks onto the stovetop just to his left. The gas sighs louder and a man crosses in front of the shadow’s hiding spot, slippered foot falling bare centimeters from the toe of his boot. He doesn’t even dare blink.

The entire process is excruciating as the man gathers a cup, a tin of tea leaves, and waits for the kettle to whistle. All the while the shadow clutches the chef’s knife to his chest, eyes following every movement with a near-giddy fascination. What starts as fear and a compulsion to hide slowly shifts into a deep-set hunger for a fight, for confrontation, and by the time the man pours a cup of tea and turns to head back upstairs the shadow is practically begging to be caught—shifting along the side of the stove’s body, with a toe edging into the light thrown from the lamp on the far side of the room.

But the man doesn’t turn around, and doesn’t see the splash of colored hair or the glint of the blade.

With a shudder the shadow peels away from the wall, scrubbing a hand across his face as though it will stave off the hunger. The man has committed no crime so far as he knows; he’s not earned that sort of game. No peace will come from bringing judgement down on the innocent.

He slides the knife back into the block and escapes out the back door, paying little attention to the flash of dark fur by his leg as he slips into the yard and fits the window back into its frame. Once everything has been returned to its proper place, the shadow closes the gate gently behind him and smiles.

The game is set.

*

Greed hangs heavy in the warm breeze, thick enough that the shadow can taste it in the back of his throat like a heady drug. Light, breath, balance—all those things have taken adjustment. All those things still threaten to overwhelm him, after an eternity without. 

But this? Reaching out and calling up the darkness? This is the most natural thing in the world.

“Ah… I seem to have brought four hundred thousand yen by mistake,” he declares gleefully now that he’s found his words, bills fanned out in demonstration like a hand of cards. The power ebbs and flows around them at low tide, darkness itself falling into his gravity.

The boy’s eyes widen— _Ushio,_ the shadow skims from dreamlike instinct, his name is Ushio—and the shadow can't help but shiver at the wave of avarice that crashes over them. This duel is purely formality; Ushio had lost the moment he’d answered the phone. Far be it for the shadow to skip ceremony, though, especially when he can play with this child like a housecat would its first live mouse.

With each pass of the blade back and forth across the vaulting horse, with each swing of the knife down at their own flesh, the charge in the air grows until it’s prickling the hair at the napes of their necks. Anticipation shivers down the shadow’s spine as he watches Ushio’s façade erode. The tide washes in, higher every round, until the shadow’s pupils are thin as pinpricks in the darkness.

Behind them, the school fades down to little more than a grid of crimson thread bleeding into the fog. Where trees rustled in the waking world there are only streaks of ink from a dry well bowing in the wind. But Ushio has let himself be spun so deep into the dark that he notices none of it, focus locked on the dwindling stack of bills as the greed drags him ever downwards.

The lower he falls the higher the shadow climbs.

In his haphazard memory there had been neither up nor down. No concept of time. Not even a shadow, truly—just a fragment of what might have been one, long ago, slipping along the corners of ageworn limestone. All that existed there were the echoes of fury and fear that drove him forward with no knowledge of what he was fleeing from. He faltered onward in waking slumber, the endlessness eroding the edges of his awareness, with no purpose but to escape the dread that chewed at his broken edges.

Now? Now he knows better. Now he can bathe in the well of twilight and rinse the panic away from his thoughts with the darkness’ power.

Ushio breathes heavily, beads of sweat dripping from his temples as he realizes that he’s no longer in control of his body, his heartbeat a rumble of approaching thunder. The knife trembles in his pale grip.

The shadow can’t keep from grinning, expression more akin to a wolf baring its teeth than to anything a human could call a smile.

Ushio breaks. He lunges forward, swinging for his face, but the shadow is faster. The blade finds nothing but air on its arc to the ground.

The darkness hits high tide, a wellspring of ancient magic that swells until the shadow’s forehead burns hotter than the brightest fire and he can see the truth of Ushio’s heart laid out in technicolor. The shadow goes dizzy with it, power coursing unbridled through his nerves as he calls forth a penalty game. No physical sensation can match the rush of the storm, crashing like lightning through his veins and leaving him electrified as he reaches into the boy’s mind and twists. Ushio goes down heavily as the shadow finally sees through clear eyes.

“A happy ending for us both, is it not?” he asks, watching the greed-laden fool fall into the rotten leaves at his feet. The sound that spills from his lips at the sight might even pass as laughter from a distance.

It's the relief that does it—that drags that breathy glee up from his chest until he’s doubled over on his knees, barely able to see straight, electric current arcing along his jagged edges like a welding torch until the shards of the shadow no longer grate and chip. The seams are messy affairs, but that hardly matters when he's _whole_. His first moments in this body had been overwhelming, threatening to drown him. Seventy sets of input, each slightly offset, scattered like light refracting through shattered crystal. Now the sensation is just as strong as it had been at those first breaths, but this time he's awash in it, effervescent.

He drops back into the grass with another bark of laughter. Still wrapped in living darkness, the area is only partially resolved, as though an artist had made their first pass at the plaster then gone home for the night. The sky is carmine at its zenith, bleeding down to indigo and azurite the closer it draws to the horizon, but the splashes of color no longer hurt to look at. The shadow drags his fingers through the half-sketched blades of grass in fascination, rips a handful out of the damp earth, relishes each piece snapping free before he lets them them scatter into the wind. Each sensation is unique now, drawn through a singular focus, and he drinks them in one by one. It's not as heady as the righteous malice of the game, but it brings him slowly back down from the stormfront and settles him firmly into the body he's found himself inhabiting.

He's still angry. Still afraid. But, for these few moments, he can stand the air in his lungs.

The sharp tang of ozone gradually gives way to the lingering scent of rain, and he lets the magic slip away with the breeze. It still roils along the joinings of his pieces, coaxing the broken places to mend, but the schoolyard falls back into focus as the darkness recedes. When nothing but the remnants within him are left he sighs and drags himself back to his feet.

All that’s left is to make sure the money is returned.

It’s a much simpler matter in reverse—the door is still unlocked, as he’d left it, so he can slip back into the kitchen and tuck the bundle of yen into its tin without anyone the wiser. The fact that he’s no longer fighting for clarity doesn’t hurt matters, either. Then a handful into the safe, a few notes for the wallet, and the rest in the envelope from the backpack.

With that, the game is truly over, and the last of the magic within him falls dormant.

*

Yugi's alarm clock blares at seven in the morning, and he wakes to find himself sprawled facedown on his bed, half-dressed, feeling like he'd been hit by a bus. A bus named Ushio, specifically. It's not the first time he's wound up at the wrong end of a fist (or five), but experience doesn't make the bruises suck any less the next day. He rolls over, only to discover that the universe has apparently found it hilarious to grace him with some unholy combination of a sinus headache and a migraine just for good measure.

Yugi shoves his face back into his pillow and groans.

He doesn't remember when he went to sleep last night, but with how tired he'd been it doesn't really surprise him. Apparently he'd given up halfway through putting on his pyjamas and flopped onto his bed without even bothering to get under the covers. The single sock he's wearing is inside out, and while his pants are on fine, only his head and one of his arms made it through his shirt. Yugi wrestles it off after a few minutes fighting to detangle it from the cord of the puzzle.

It still hasn't fully registered that he's completed it—after eight years, a tiny but treacherous part of him had started to think that he never would. Every time he'd come close, he'd find another tiny piece that fit nowhere and have to start over from scratch. Last night, though… it was like the less he focused on solving it, the more his hands knew what to do on their own, until he was snapping the last couple pieces of gold into place.

The weight of the metal on his neck is reassuring in an odd sort of way. As awkwardly-sized as it is—the corner hits just under his sternum, which hurts when it knocks against his bruises—he can't help but feel like he's meant to wear it. Maybe that's a silly thing to think, but something about it just feels right. Like it’s been waiting to be worn.

Yugi pulls himself up by the corner of his desk and trudges to the bathroom to get ready. The mirror sugarcoats nothing as he reaches for his toothbrush; he looks like shit. The bruising has bloomed into an impressive mix of purple and blue along his cheekbone and down his jaw, and his left eye is swollen enough to be pretty noticeable. With a wince he tugs off the bandages on his cheek and tapes down fresh gauze, grabbing a couple tablets of bufferin for the headache while he's in the medicine cabinet.

The pressure behind his eyes is probably autumn pollen again, although he's not as congested as he usually gets when his allergies act up. At least there's that, he guesses, rubbing the bridge of his nose and hoping the medicine kicks in quickly. If he's lucky it might take the edge off the pain in his ribs from where Ushio had gotten a couple good kicks in once he was down. He really hopes Jounouchi and Honda are better off, but kind of doubts it—they hadn’t looked great when Ushio had led him over to see them.

With a sigh, Yugi heads back to his room to get dressed, stepping over discarded clothes from the past few days and making a mental note that he needs to clean up before his mom sees the mess. There’s no way he can come up with the money he needs to pay Ushio and the Morals Committee in time, so chances are good that he’s going to get dragged off behind the school again; he just really hopes Ushio wasn’t being serious about the knife. He’d really like not to get stabbed. And where on earth does Ushio think he’s going to get that sort of cash, anyway? In a night, too! Sometimes Yugi wishes he didn’t hate fighting just so that he didn’t get pushed around like this so much.

And ah, crap… where did he put his keys? They’re not in the drawer he usually keeps them in and he’s already running late thanks to the way his head feels like someone stuffed it full of cotton, changed their mind, and then started jabbing it with a pair of chopsticks. He digs through the rest of the drawers with one hand while he tightens the buckle of his leather collar with the other, but comes up empty unless he’s counting a half-fossilized pack of gum and a couple marbles. Almost ten minutes later he finally finds them in the pocket of a jacket lying in a heap by the foot of his bed, which Yugi’s pretty sure he hasn’t worn since last weekend.

He shoves his civics textbook into his backpack, where he finds a thick envelope stashed haphazardly in the outside pocket—the sort of envelope that Grandpa uses in the shop, specifically. Inside is a stack of twenty ten-thousand yen notes (each with a tear in the watermark of Fukuzawa’s face, for some reason), and it’s… it’s too much. He doesn’t know how Grandpa found out about Ushio, but Yugi can’t possibly take that much money when he was the one who’d gotten himself into trouble to begin with. He tucks the banknotes back into the envelope and leaves it on his desk to return after school, unwilling to even risk bringing it on the likely chance that once Ushio has kicked him around a bit he’ll go through Yugi’s bag for whatever cash he has on him.

Grabbing an apple on his way through the kitchen, Yugi takes the stairs down to the game shop two at a time and calls a goodbye as he dashes out the door. Normally he’d walk to school since it’s not too cold out yet, but thanks to his missing keys he’s late enough to head for the bus stop instead.

By some small miracle he makes it to school in time, trying and failing to stifle a yawn as he passes whatever commotion is happening by the garden. How late was he up working on the puzzle? He shouldn’t be _this_ tired, he doesn’t think, but maybe it’s the stress and general recently-punched-a-lot aches getting to him. It’s not until he gets to homeroom that he hears what happened to draw the crowd—that Ushio had lost his mind, rolling around in the trash and leaves raving about money. The pressure in his head gets worse, but Yugi is distracted by a sudden rush of sadistic delight knowing that Ushio has been brought low. 

That’s not… that’s not how he feels, is it? He’s relieved, of course, that Ushio can’t hurt him or his friends anymore. And they really are friends now, or at least Jounouchi and he are—Jounouchi had said as much (before blushing furiously and escaping the scene of the crime, losing a shoe in the process). Yugi clutches the Egyptian treasure to his chest, silently thanking it for granting his wish. But all that aside, he’s not happy that Ushio has lost his grip on reality. As cruel as he’d acted, Yugi reminds himself firmly, he doesn’t deserve that.

But despite his attempts to convince his traitorous heart otherwise, he can’t help but feel a trickle of satisfaction. It hangs just beyond the edges of his vision, following half a pace behind him from class to class while Anzu tells him that her cat had gotten out the night before. He agrees to help look for it after school—he’s taken care of it before while her family was away, and it likes him—and they manage to convince Jounouchi to join the search party as well.

By the time they’re scouring the streets of Domino City with flyers and cat treats, Yugi’s mostly convinced himself that it’s just the headache making him irritable. He really does hope Ushio is okay… just, maybe not near him anytime soon. Or Jounouchi or Honda, for that matter.

And maybe, with a little bit of luck, tomorrow will be a good day.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Juju has done an absolutely _incredible_ job illustrating the first scene of this chapter [here](https://twitter.com/jujuohoho/status/1197367263743094784?s=19)!

"This is a terrible idea," Anzu notes from her perch on Yugi's bed, holding a lighter to the sewing needle she'd brought.

"If I wanna be an idol, I've gotta have the look!" Jounouchi insists. "Look at Yugi! He knows who he is. When he got dressed in the morning, he had a _vision._ Right, Yugi?" 

Yugi blinks, still kind of blindsided by the fact that there are people in his bedroom and they're acting like this is normal. It's not that he doesn't know anyone at school—he does, and he talks to people in 1-B, but it's mostly incidental. They definitely don't make an effort to pull him into the conversation when he starts to space out. This is kind of amazing.

"I mostly envisioned wearing pants," he answers after a moment, dropping the ice back into the cup and brandishing a marker.

Jounouchi pats his shoulder with a grin. "And we're glad you did, buddy."

He may have been a bit of a jerk in school, but at least Jounouchi had looked at Yugi and seen someone worth his time, even if that time was mostly spent harassing him. It had hurt a little when he would take his things or make fun of him, but even so Yugi can’t describe how grateful he was just to be noticed.

The thing about loneliness is that, after long enough, it starts to eat you alive. You can't escape it, not in your home and not in a crowd. It burrows its way into your heart and until it's all you can think about. At some point it's not just that other people have pushed you away, because you find yourself staring at them from the other side of a chasm your heart can't cross.

It's like you've started to fade. People look through you instead of at you, they don't hear you when you talk, they forget you even exist if you're not right in front of them. And so you start to feel like a ghost. Like a spirit that can't quite align itself with the physical world.

You stop feeling real.

Eventually you'd do anything just to know that someone sees you.

It makes it all the more surreal that they're all hanging out together now, laughing and teasing each other good-naturedly. He probably looks like an idiot, smiling this much, but he can’t stop himself.

Anzu flicks the lighter closed and leans down. "How are you going to dress, then? Idols are supposed to be cute, they don't just wear the same three t-shirts every day when they’re not at school…"

Jounouchi sputters a protest, spinning to face her and earning a line of blue ink across his cheek in the process. “I’ll have you know the girls at school think I’m a total catch, thank you very much! And I’m going shopping with Yugi this weekend. By Monday you’ll have to pry the ladies off me.”

Rolling her eyes, she pulls a butterfly hair clip off the bow of her uniform and hands it to Yugi, who’s fighting to keep Jounouchi’s hair out of the way. He smiles and takes it gratefully, focused on his work while Anzu continues to rib on Jounouchi.

“Maybe you should have started with the clothes? So you had an idea of the look you were going for?”

“Nah, this is the most important part! The gals will go crazy for it!”

Yugi’s only half paying attention to the conversation while he tilts Jounouchi’s head around to make sure he got the mark in the right place. After so many mornings telling himself that today was going to be a fun day, and then quietly amending today to tomorrow in his head, it's amazing that tomorrow seems to have finally come true.

He silently thanks the puzzle again for granting his wish. Eight years was worth the joy that keeps threatening to bubble over into laughter, or tears, or whatever outlet it can find.

Yugi doesn’t mind giving Jounouchi a second chance to be nicer. Everyone needs second chances sometimes, and Yugi hasn’t felt this content in years. Curling up to work on his puzzle had always been peaceful, and a lot of fun, but it never staved off the feeling of being a few inches removed from reality. Now, clutching a pear (they were going to use an apple, but he’d eaten the last one for breakfast last week), the banter is smoothing things over in his heart that he never realized were jostled out of place to begin with.

He should probably join in the conversation instead of getting caught up in his thoughts, but it’s hard to get past his awe. Besides, he has to focus.

“If you’re trying to be cute you can’t open every conversation by threatening to punch someone,” Anzu points out, laughing at some joke Yugi had missed.

Jounouchi scowls. “If people didn’t want me to punch them then they should stop asking to be pu—”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, the word turning into an indignant shout halfway through as Yugi jabs the needle through Jounouchi’s earlobe.

“Ah, shit, _motherfucker_ , that hurts!”

Anzu laughs even harder and hands Yugi a star-shaped stud she'd lost the match to. “What did you expect? You’re stabbing a hole in your ear."

"I mean, yeah, but half the girls have done it, how bad could it be?" He groans as Yugi pushes the earring through, having to wiggle it a little to get it all the way in. "Ow, this sucks."

"My mom had her ears pierced when I was ten, and I don't remember her even saying ouch," Yugi teases with a hesitant grin, winking at Anzu while Jounouchi is busy cradling his ear.

"Hey!" he protests, "Be nice to me, I just got stabbed!"

Yugi laughs quietly and pushes himself up off the floor to find a mirror. 

“Oh, Yugi!” Anzu leans forward on the bed with a frown. “I meant to ask—how are you feeling? Your eye is looking better.”

“Ah…” His cheeks heat, and he busies himself digging through the drawers of his desk trying to remember where he’d put it last. “I’m fine, really. It wasn’t that bad.” It’s a blatant lie to anyone who’d been there, but Yugi isn’t inclined to remind either of them about the string of beatings he’s taken at school over the past couple weeks. His most recent black eye is layered over the yellow-green of the one Ushio had given him and it smarts like hell.

Yugi’s gotten pretty good at hiding bruises, though. He knows it’s probably not the most manly thing in the world, but sometimes he just doesn’t want to deal with the looks he gets from teachers and students alike after a rough week at school. He can’t hide them completely most of the time, but at least he can make them less obvious. That’s what he’s doing now that the worst of the swelling has gone down—with a bit of makeup blended out over the nastiest of the bruises it looks like he took less of a beating than he’s feeling.

“I don’t know about the guy who got you, but that camera-toting bastard packed a punch. My ribs are still sore,” Jounouchi grumbles, taking the mirror that Yugi’s finally managed to find. “Damn I look sexy, though! Hell yeah! Mazaki, what do you think?”

“It’s definitely a choice...” Anzu starts skeptically, before laughing at the look on his face and relenting. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding! It looks good.”

Jounouchi preens, and Yugi can’t help but agree that the earring suits him. 

“Hey, speaking of that director creep, did you hear that he went blind?” Anzu asks, and Yugi blinks.

Jounouchi looks up from the mirror. “Wait, really?”

She nods. “It was on the radio. The morning after he was at our school someone found him in ZTV’s parking garage mumbling about extra eyes or something—he can still see, technically, but his vision’s bad enough now that he’s legally blind and can’t direct anymore.”

"Serves him right," he scoffs, rubbing at his sternum. "Beating kids up just for ratings… what sort of jerk does that?"

Yugi remembers how helpless he'd felt as the director had pointed a camera at Jounouchi, hurting his friend while he couldn't fight back. All Yugi had wanted was to see an idol! He’d bought flowers for her and everything, and it had taken all his courage to go meet her behind the gym. And instead it had all just been a trick to get him alone and hurt him for TV ratings. That sort of stuff between kids is one thing, because kids are mean before they learn better, but from an adult? It's a sort of cruelty Yugi hopes he never understands.

He understands anger, though. Understands the cold fire that raced through his veins as he'd knelt on the damp pavement and helped Jounouchi upright. Yugi’s never enjoyed being angry, but that doesn’t mean he’s exempt from feeling it sometimes.

The room tilts slightly, just for a moment, before he shakes the sensation off.

"Maybe he was desperate," Yugi tries to reason. “Maybe he owes money to somebody. People do bad stuff when they don’t think they have a choice.”

Anzu’s expression softens at the edges. “You really do still think the best of everyone, huh?”

He blushes, busying himself with putting the needle and fruit aside where nobody will get hurt on them. “I just don’t want to live in a world without hope, you know? That’s all.”

Maybe it’s naïve, but Yugi needs to be able to believe that there’s good in people. That they can learn, and grow, and change. If he didn’t hold onto that faith, he thinks he’d turn into a bad person himself, each bruised jaw and scraped knee wearing him down until he started to throw punches in return.

"I don't get how you're so chill, man. Someone pisses me off and it's all over." Jounouchi pushes his hair back against his part, scowling when it flops back into its usual place almost immediately. "You got any hair stuff?"

Yugi shrugs and pushes himself up off the floor. "I don't like violence. I guess that makes it easier." He ducks into the bathroom across the hall and rifles through the cabinet for a minute, coming back with his mom's can of hairspray which he hands off to Jounouchi.

More than once he’s found himself face-down on the asphalt thinking about what it would be like if he threw a punch, but remembering that the other people are human with their own struggles always tempers that impulse before it really takes hold. He hates violence. But, much like anger, hating it doesn’t erase the thoughts. It just means that he feels like shit about them afterwards.

Being bullied helps feed the slow drip of lonely sorrow that he’s been drowning in for years, but he’ll take what's dished out regardless. What’s one more hit among the menagerie? Maybe Ushio had been struggling with his own problems and didn't know how else to deal with them. It's not the right thing to do, obviously, but Yugi thinks he deserves a chance to try again.

As he settles on the bed beside Anzu, something moves in his peripheral and he glances over toward the window, but it's just a shadow from the wind rustling the tree outside. He stretches out on his back, legs hanging over the side of the mattress, and yawns.

Everything else aside, Yugi is happy. Really, deeply happy, content like something restless in his chest has finally settled after sixteen years gnawing at his ribcage. He’s not alone anymore, and basking in the chatter between Anzu and Jounouchi warms his soul in the same way that the autumn sun streaming through the skylight does his skin. Maybe it’s just as well the idol was fake, because Jounouchi would make a better idol than some girl any day. And Yugi gets to help.

Anzu leaves first, wanting to make it home before dark. Jounouchi sticks around a bit longer to iron out their plans for Sunday, deciding to meet up at the station that morning so they can catch the train into downtown Domino together, and Yugi walks him out, settling on the half-wall by the bus stop while they wait. It’s nice to sit with someone and not have to talk, but know that they’re there because you are.

They watch the traffic for a few minutes and he pushes his bangs out of his face.

"Hey,” Yugi finally gathers his confidence to say, even if he ducks his head a bit as he does. “Thanks for getting me home the other night after all the ZTV stuff. You’re a good guy, Jounouchi.”

Jounouchi looks over, frowning in confusion. “Not like I did much—you’re the one who basically dragged me back to my apartment.”

That's thoroughly news to him. Yugi blinks, thinks it over, then blinks again, no clearer than before on how that happened. “Really? The last thing I remember that night is the director going after you on camera. I thought you brought me back to the shop.”

“Nah, I could barely stay up after that asshole kneed me in the ribs; you half-carried me back like it was your fuckin’ life’s mission. I still don’t know how you supported that much of my weight, with how tiny you are and all.” He fiddles with his earring, spinning it in the new piercing despite the way it makes him wince. “Man, you must’ve been pretty concussed to not remember any of that. Now I feel bad about leaving you to walk back alone. You, uh… you’re okay, right? You look okay.”

“Minus allergies?" Yugi asks with a shrug. "I’m fine now. He must’ve just hit me wrong.”

Jounouchi laughs. “Yeah, allergies and that shiner you’ve got. You take a beating like a champ, I’ll give you that much.”

“Practice makes perfect,” Yugi replies with a grim smile.

Jounouchi looks away, something tightening in his gaze. “Don’t it ever,” he agrees.

The rest of the week doesn't go half as well as that evening, though—Yugi gets caught on the bus by one of his least favorite people and finds himself with even more tickets to Souzouji's karaoke recital than last time the guy had cornered him. Yugi clings to the memories as an outpost of hope as the paper sits heavy as lead in his pocket. He doesn't know anyone he hates enough to consider selling them to, so each morning he wakes up and smudges concealer over his yellowing bruises, and each night he falls into bed knowing he’s one day closer to the living nightmare from class 1-C. Saturday morning he takes the other third of the tickets off Hanasaki in a move that turns a probable update to his black eye into a definite one, but at least now only he has to go through it and Hanasaki can breathe easier.

Evening falls and he shuffles aboard the train out to Souzouji's haunt of choice—a little dive that probably doesn't check IDs. In a brief moment of weakness he wonders if he's desperate enough to try asking for a drink to take the edge off of what's coming (this is his third time having to suffer through it and he knows how bad it’s going to be), but he has the unfortunate curse of looking twelve years old no matter how much leather he wears. Even a place like this would think twice before handing him alcohol.

Instead he sighs, steels himself for a very long night, and trudges to the room listed on all fifteen tickets in his pocket.

*

Yugi blinks woozily, world slightly off-kilter as the sound of sirens drives a spike through his head. He's standing in the pouring rain outside the karaoke bar, clothes soaked, hair dripping cold water down the back of his neck. Hanasaki is slumped on the curb beside him, half-conscious at best.

"What—?" he murmurs to himself, shutting his eyes to block out the way his vision is spinning. The last thing he remembers is standing over Hanasaki, rage boiling over in his chest at the injustice of the night. That hadn't been that long after he'd gotten there at eight. A glance at his watch shows it's almost nine thirty now—he's lost more than an hour. A gust of wind drives the night's wet chill deep into Yugi's bones and he shivers, wiping at his face with his sleeve like that'll do anything when his jacket’s soaked too.

With a final wail an ambulance pulls up to the door and a couple paramedics jump out, hurrying a stretcher into the karaoke bar he and Hanasaki had—presumably, give or take that conspicuously blank hour—just left.

Maybe Souzouji had taken a swing at him, too, Yugi considers, and that's why he can't remember much. The right hit could have knocked him out for a while, especially since this month has been kind of bad for his health on the whole. It wouldn't be shocking if all the mild concussions have finally started to catch up to him… If he's honest with himself, he should probably see a doctor at some point. His head really hurts again. There's a pressure behind his eyes and in his temples, like his brain is trying to squeeze its way out of his skull, not to mention how badly his ears are ringing. Yugi pinches the bridge of his nose to try and alleviate the worst of it.

Honestly, the ringing part is probably from Souzouji wailing into the microphone like a cat that had gotten itself caught up in an electric fence. 

Belatedly, it registers that he’s not the only one out here. "Are you alright?" he finally remembers to ask Hanasaki, glancing down to where the boy is clutching his shattered glasses to his chest.

Hanasaki looks up at him, eyes wide as saucers, and nods.

Yugi sinks to the curb beside him. The wet pavement flickers red and white in the lights of the ambulance, long shadows stretching out around them with each staccato flash. "I'm sorry I got you into this mess," he says quietly. "That Souzouji is terrible. I don't understand how people can hurt others like that."

They watch from down the sidewalk as the door of the karaoke bar swings open and the paramedics return to the ambulance. The boy on the stretcher thrashes, pulling at the restraints and howling nonsense in a voice Yugi is now all too familiar with.

Without his microphone, Souzouji just sounds pitiful. Yugi stares in horror and hugs himself against the cold as another shiver rocks through him. His bangs are plastered to his face, dripping down his cheeks and off his chin, but he's not confident he could walk all the way to the train station yet without losing his balance. With a grimace, he drops his head against his knees and tries to figure out what happened.

He could ask Hanasaki, probably, but that would mean admitting he doesn't remember the night and Jounouchi gave him a weird enough look last time it had happened. Besides, Yugi tries to convince himself, peeking out from behind his knees to look at the other boy—Hanasaki barely looks conscious himself. From what little Yugi remembers, he'd taken the brunt of Souzouji's wrath.

It's not like either of them could have scratched someone twice their size. Did some security guard come in and find Souzouji beating them? Yugi's fairly certain the bar is too small to have proper guards, and it's not like some concerned citizen would have stepped in; he's been hit enough in public to know that people don't intervene. Not even teachers do, most of the time. But what else, then? An actual medical problem? He doesn't think Souzouji was in bad health, but who knows?

Then again, he wouldn’t have said _he_ was in bad health, either, but this is the second time in as many weeks he’s lost time and come to with a splitting headache. He’s trying not to think about it too hard. It’s probably nothing, right?

Another flash of red sends the darkness skittering into long shadows again, and for a moment the way the street lights reflect in a puddle make it look like his shadow is looking back at him with two glowing eyes. Yugi rubs his temples, trying to shake the feeling of unease that's settled over him, and in the next flash from the ambulance it’s obvious they’re street lights again.

He needs a good night's sleep, that's all. 

Exhaustion hangs heavily from his shoulders, emotional as much as physical—the same he gets when he cries for too long, or loses his temper and winds up shouting at someone. It's like a cough that sticks around after a cold, when you're better but your lungs haven't gotten the message yet. More than anything, he just feels drained.

Yugi’s pretty sure the rain's soaked all the way through him by now, and Hanasaki doesn't look like he's feeling much better. He’s got a nasty bruise blossoming across his jaw, and both of their uniforms are drenched from blue to black. Hanasaki hasn't spoken since Yugi stumbled back into awareness, but Yugi doesn't remember him speaking much even in class, so maybe he’s just quiet. Or he’s not feeling like talking after everything that happened with Souzouji.

Souzouji, whose shrieks are suddenly muffled as the doors of the ambulance close.

The quiet is a haunting one, filled with questions left unanswered. "We should go home," Yugi says into the emptiness, words catching in his throat and coming out squeaky. After the commotion, the quiet feels thick enough to choke on. He gathers his resolve and drags himself to his feet, stumbling slightly as the horizon tips and then settles. It's going to be a long trip back to the game shop, but at least once he's there he can dry off and be damp and scared instead of soaked and scared. Small mercies.

Hanasaki flinches from his offered hand. It's subtle—just a flicker before he reaches up to accept the help—but not so subtle that Yugi doesn't see it. Yugi pulls him up from the curb and ducks under his arm to help support him, gritting his teeth in determination. It's just a block and a half. Then they can sit down again.

Except that the block and a half seems like ten, and Yugi feels like he’s just the slightest bit off-center from his body. He’s pretty sure he’s not going to black out again, but he doesn’t remember seeing it coming earlier, either. One moment he was kneeling beside Hanasaki, and the next he was outside. It’s not that different from what had happened with Jounouchi and the ZTV director, except that time he’d woken up in bed.

Yugi bites his lip and tries to remember if he’d felt the same flare of rage that time as he had tonight. There had been a moment, just before his memory cuts out, where he thinks he’d almost felt… excited?

The thought scares him.

To be honest, basically all of this scares him.

The last thing he remembers is swearing to Souzouji that he wouldn’t forgive him. But even though the words were his, and he meant them, they weren’t something he would have ever said aloud. Something had torn them up his throat like barbed wire from the places in his heart he’s least proud of. 

Yugi had been home the whole night that Ushio had started raving, though, so it can’t be anything to do with him. Right? And whatever had happened to the director had happened at ZTV. This is the first time he’s actually been nearby when the madness had hit someone.

Maybe it's contagious. Maybe Yugi’s going to be the next one to start screaming.

He and Hanasaki finally half-trip down the stairs to the subway platform, and it turns out they’re going in opposite directions, which confuses Yugi a bit. They take the same bus to school, so why wouldn’t they be on the same train? 

Hanasaki’s comes first, and Yugi finds himself trapped alone with his thoughts in the quiet station. He slides down to sit against the wall, hugging his knees to his chest and feeling smaller than ever.

 _Find something good,_ he tells himself. It’s easy to be sad and scared, but there’s always something to be happy about if he looks hard enough. He’s been waiting for a good day for a while, telling himself every morning that he would come home happy, only to be proven wrong. Tomorrow, though, Jounouchi and he are going shopping—that’s a good thing. He has two whole friends now, and they want to spend time with him. Jounouchi wants his input, even, not just his company.

Yugi already has a few places in mind to find colorful street fashion secondhand. He usually keeps his wardrobe firmly muted besides his hair, but Jounouchi doesn't seem meant for all-black. Brights seem like a better fit, and Yugi is more than ready to drag him around until he’s found exactly what he wants.

And as long as he's thinking about that, he can hold out for the train to come. It’s hard to focus on plans for the next day, though, when he keeps thinking back to how Hanasaki had glanced back as he boarded his train—gaze set just slightly too high for their eyes to meet, something haunted behind his wide eyes as they flickered to Yugi's forehead.

Shaken, Yugi pulls his knees in tighter. It's fine. Everything's going to be fine. He's going downtown with Jounouchi tomorrow, they're going to have some fun, and he's going to remember the whole day. No mysterious blacking out. Besides, there's no chance in hell that Jounouchi would be scared of him like Hanasaki seems to be; Jounouchi is too self-assured for something silly like that. Yugi can't imagine Jounouchi being scared by much of anything.

For a moment he swears he catches his shadow moving in the corner of his eye, and he startles before realizing that his train is pulling in. Yugi breathes a sigh of relief. It's _fine,_ he tells himself again, it was just from the headlights. He's wound himself up out of stress and it’s making him jumpy over nothing. He pushes himself up and shuffles into line on the platform, wet footprints scuffed across the pavement in his wake.

Everything’s going to be alright—he’ll be home soon, and tomorrow will be a fun day.

For real, this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For updates, related content, and ygo art, you can find me on twitter as [augustarchon](https://twitter.com/augustarchon).


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